Professor Trevor Graham

Biography

Professor Trevor Graham joined the ICR as Director of the Centre for Evolution and Cancer in spring 2022. He is group leader of the Genomics and Evolutionary Dynamics laboratory.

For the previous 8.5 years Trevor led the Evolution and Cancer laboratory at the CRUK Barts Cancer Institute within QMUL. Trevor’s laboratory was the first mathematical theory-led laboratory in the Institute. He co-led the development of computational biology as core research theme at Barts, culminating in the establishment of the Centre for Genomics and Computational Biology in 2019, where Trevor was deputy lead.

Trevor’s research is focused on understanding the evolutionary dynamics of cancer development and translating this knowledge to improve clinical management of disease. His laboratory combines expertise in evolutionary theory, mathematical modelling and bioinformatics, together with cutting-edge wet-lab analyses foremost in genomics, single cell sequencing and molecular pathology.

His research has four main themes:

1. Population genetics approaches to cancer genomics.
2. Evolutionary dynamics of colon cancer development, metastasis and response to treatment.
3. Enabling early detection of cancer risk inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
4. Prevention of drug resistance during cancer treatment by evolutionary steering.

Trevor’s undergraduate training was in mathematics (Mathematics MSci, Imperial College, 2002) before embarking on an interdisciplinary PhD (MRes Modelling Biological Complexity, UCL, 2004; PhD Mathematical Biology, UCL, 2009). Following two postdocs, the first in Professor Sir Nicholas Wright’s lab at the CRUK London Research Institute, then with Professor Carlo Maley at UCSF, where Trevor continued to mix mathematics with molecular biology. Trevor became a group leader at the CRUK Barts Cancer Institute in 2013.

Trevor’s research and his group are funded by CRUK, the Wellcome Trust, the US National Institutes of Health, MRC, BBSRC and Bowel Research UK.